Few things in life fulfill me more than my blanket rejection of discounting.
Price promotions are a mistake.
Always.
No caveats. No soft qualifiers about “remaining disciplined on promotional intensity.” A flat, absolute, door-slamming no. On discounting, absolutism is the correct strategic posture.
If you won’t accept the ravings of an ex-professor with a pricing fetish, I refer you to Cincinnati. On last week’s fourth-quarter earnings call, P&G chief financial officer Andre Schulten was asked about the heat in the promotional environment. Volume sold on promotion in Europe is up about five points in the latest read, he acknowledged, as the market drifts back toward pre-Covid levels of deal intensity, with a little World Cup froth on top. Rival Unilever had cheerfully reported cranking up its own promotional activity a day earlier, as an official World Cup sponsor with 50,000 creators at its disposal.
P&G’s Schulten dismissed promotion as a route to building a business or acquiring users “in any way, shape or form.” At P&G, promotion has exactly one sanctioned job: driving trial. Beyond that, it does not feature in how the company intends to grow.
Schulten went further still. P&G is deliberately…
